ТОП просматриваемых книг сайта:
.
Читать онлайн.
The author has given to the book the title: “The Origin of Christian Science”—“A Key to the Writings of Mary Baker G. Eddy.” The title, with the subscription, is itself explanatory of the plan of the treatment. Parallel passages are produced and quoted, with citations made in footnotes to the authors from which they come. And these are compared with the writings of Mrs. Eddy on the same subjects. Since the author of Christian Science claims to have given a key to the sacred Scriptures, it is but fitting that one who knows, should furnish a key to her writings. Dr. Stafford has shown that Plato was the manufacturer of that “key” and has prior claim, and that he never thought of connecting it with the revelation sent down from heaven. He has also traced the course of those who have temporized with that “key” from Plato's day down through the centuries until Mrs. Eddy seized it and attempted to thrust it into the lock of eternity.
Our debt to Dr. Stafford is enhanced by the clearness with which he has presented a very abstruse subject. The mysteries of human life are so deep and so little known that many people are helpless in the hands of those who would lead them. Witness those who resort to spiritism, mind-reading, fortune-telling and what not. Dr. Stafford has laid bare the very abstruse subjects involved in Platonic philosophy and Christian Science in such a way as to make them clear to all who seek to know the truth. He has shown by irrefutable evidence that Christian Science is a key which locks God out of his word and locks Jesus Christ out of his blood-bought kingdom.
This key opens a door outward, where Plato and Plotinus and Proclus and Spinoza roam in the limitless unreal, but never can it open the door into the Father's house of many mansions.
First Baptist Church, Waco, Texas.
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER I.
THE PROBLEM AND THE PROOF.
One of the most remarkable movements of modern times is Christian Science. It claims hundreds of thousands of adherents. It has gone into many lands. It has made converts of the rich and the poor, the educated and the illiterate, of the mighty and the meek. When we note that it has accomplished this in the brief period of less than fifty years and consider the radical character of its teaching, affecting profoundly its followers religiously, medically, socially, and intellectually, we are the more ready to wonder at its rise and progress.
Christian Science is associated with the name of Mary Baker G. Eddy. She claims to be the discoverer and founder of it. And this claim is reiterated by all loyal Christian Scientists. No decrees issuing from the Vatican have found a more ready response from loyal subjects than the expressed will of Mrs. Eddy; and no Pope, it seems, has assumed such sublime right to give commandments to mankind.
I am concerned in this essay with only one thing, namely, Mrs. Eddy's claim to be the discoverer and founder of Christian Science. The ability of Mrs. Eddy can be and, I think, should be freely conceded. In fact she has proved herself to be a genius. Her moral character too has stood very well the fierce fires of criticism, though there are some things in her history and some qualities in her disposition that are not flattering. These matters, however, weigh nothing as concerns the question before us in this discussion, namely, the original source of the principles of Christian Science.
[1]Mrs. Eddy's claim expressed in her own language is as follows. She says: “It was in Massachusetts in February, 1866, and after the death of the magnetic doctor, Mr. P. P. Quimby, whom Spiritualists would associate therewith, but who was in no wise connected with this event, that I discovered the Science of divine Metaphysical Healing, which I afterwards named Christian Science. The discovery came to pass in this way. During twenty years prior to my discovery I had been trying to trace all physical effects to a mental cause; and in the latter part of 1866 I gained the scientific certainty that all causation was Mind, and every effect a mental phenomenon.”[2] Continuing to explain she says: "“I then withdrew from society about three years, — to ponder my mission, to search the Scriptures, to find the Science of Mind, that should take the things of God and show them to the creature and reveal the great curative Principle, — Deity.”[3] Speaking again and in many places of this discovery, she says: “In following these leadings of scientific revelation, the Bible was my only textbook”;[4] “No human pen nor tongue taught me the science contained in this book”;[5] “I have found nothing in ancient or modern systems on which to found my own, except the teachings and demonstrations of our great Master and the lives of prophets and apostles. The Bible has been my only authority. I have had no other guide in the straight and narrow way of Truth”;[6] “Science is an emanation of divine Mind, and is alone able to interpret God aright. It has a spiritual and not a material origin. It is a divine utterance”;[7] “He (Christ) left no definite rule for demonstrating the Principle of healing and preventing disease. This rule remained to be discovered in Christian Science”;[8] “The Scriptures gave no direct interpretation of the scientific basis for demonstrating the spiritual Principle of healing until our Heavenly Father saw fit, through the Key to the Scriptures in Science and Health to unlock this mystery of godliness”;[9] “The revelation of Truth in the understanding came to me gradually and apparently through divine power”;[10] “To one ‘born of the flesh’, however, Divine Science must be a discovery. Woman must give it birth”;[11] “All Science is a revelation.”[12] How Mrs. Eddy can regard anything as being both a discovery and a revelation will be explained under the discussion of her psychology. Such terms are not inconsistent for her. She uses the adverb, “apparently,” not to express doubt but desirable modesty.
It is a daring claim that Mrs. Eddy makes and the way in which it is declared is most interesting. Nothing in all that Mrs. Eddy has written is so satisfactory and so unsatisfactory as this, so frank and so elusive. Read the statements carefully and see if they are not self-contradictory. What books or authorities was she studying during the twenty years before she discovered the principle of metaphysical healing, after which discovery she turned to the Scriptures? Since she confesses that Christ left no definite rule for demonstrating the principle of healing, how could the Bible be her only authority and “guide in the ‘straight and narrow way’ of Truth”? And if this “rule remained to be discovered in Christian Science”, which came to her as a divine revelation, has Christian Science a fundamental rule that was not taught by Christ? If so how can Christian Science be founded on “the teachings and demonstrations of our great Master and the lives of prophets and apostles”? Mrs. Eddy confesses that the “definite rule for demonstrating the Principle of healing and preventing disease” is not in the teachings of Christ, but is in Christian Science. Now this rule is a fundamental principle of Christian Science. It is the principle Mrs. Eddy claims to have discovered after twenty years of searching. “In following these leadings of scientific revelations,” she says, “the Bible was my only text-book.” But whence did she get “these leadings” in the following of which the Bible became her guide?
But I need not so soon anticipate the line of argument. Look again at the language of this remarkable claim and see that these three things are clearly affirmed.
1. That Mrs. Eddy is the discoverer and founder of Christian Science.
2. That the Bible was her authority for the system.
3. That she was not influenced by any other authorities.
I undertake in this essay to prove that Mrs. Eddy's claim in all three counts just specified is false. If I show that she was influenced by others fundamentally, so much as to do little more than to reproduce their system, then I disprove the third proposition and show that the first and main element of her claim, namely, that she is the discoverer and founder of Christian Science, has no